Course aims:

Use the structure of pragmatic research to discover personal conclusions about language and communication.
Compare cultural communication methods and identify where misunderstandings are likely to take place.
Analyze any conversation as a piece of linguistic data

Course Entry Requirements:

At least B2 English level: upper independent English level. A B2 user can communicate easily and spontaneously in a clear and detailed manner.

Course contents:

DEFINING PRAGMATICS, SOME ISSUES IN PRAGMATICS, CONTEXT, IMPLICATURE AND REFERENCE. PRAGMATIC PRINCIPLES. SPEECH ACTS(1). SPEECH ACTS (2). CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS. PRAGMATICS & CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS. CONVERSATIONAL MAXIMS AND THE COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE. METHODOLOGICAL ISSUES IN CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS . PRAGMATICS ACROSS CULTURES

Teaching methods:

This is largely a discussion course. There will be significant hands-on activities that will require everyone to work together. Q & A Discourse analysis

Learning outcomes:

This course provides an introduction to pragmatics, an important sub-field of linguistics. Pragmatics is the study of contextualized meaning in language. In pragmatics, we examine the relationship between the meaning of an utterance and the context in which the utterance is produced. In this course, we will explore a wide range of topics in the discipline, such as presupposition, implicature, speech acts, deixis and reference. Students will read original and recent work in these areas, and engage themselves in analyzing different types of utterances and their meanings as they are shaped by different pragmatic factors.

Learning outcomes verification and assessment criteria:

analyses of utterances - weekly assignments (20%), written examination (75%), class participation (5%)

Recommended reading:

Austin, J. L., How to Do Things With Words, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1962, 174.
Potts, Christopher, The Logic of Conventional Implicatures, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2005, 243.
Thomas, Jenny, Meaning in Interaction: An Introduction to Pragmatics, Longman, London, 1995, 201.
Yule, George, Pragmatics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1996, 187.